Absorbing book describes, in detail, farm tools and kitchen implements and how they were made. Includes devices used by curriers, wheelwrights, coopers, blacksmiths, loggers, tanners, coachmakers, and other craftsmen of the pre-industrial age. An informal, expressively written book for cultural historians, woodcrafters, and Americana enthusiasts. 184 black-and-white illustrations.

Excerpts from a teenager's diary interspersed with the author's comments and illustrations depict the lifestyle and crafts of rural New England.

This collection of original essays documents technology's centrality to the history of early America. Unlike much previous scholarship, this volume emphasizes the quotidian rather than the exceptional: the farm household seeking to preserve food or acquire tools, the surveyor balancing economic and technical considerations while laying out a turnpike, the woman of child-bearing age employing herbal contraceptives, and the neighbors of a polluted urban stream debating issues of property, odor, and health. These cases and others drawn from brewing, mining, farming, and woodworking enable the authors to address recent historiographic concerns, including the environmental aspects of technological change and the gendered nature of technical knowledge. Brooke Hindle's classic 1966 essay on early American technology is also reprinted, and his view of the field is reassessed. A bibliographical essay and summary of Hindle's bibliographic findings conclude the volume. The contributors are Judith A. McGaw, Robert C. Post, Susan E. Klepp, Michal McMahon, Patrick W. O'Bannon, Sarah F. McMahon, Donald C. Jackson, Robert B. Gordon, Carolyn C. Cooper, and Nina E. Lerman.

This book underscores the important role that wood has played in the development of American life and culture. Covering such topics as the aesthetics of wood, wooden implements, and carpentry, Sloane remarks expansively and with affection on the resourcefulness of Early Americans in their use of this precious commodity.

Lavishly illustrated primer on the work of tailors, shoemakers, calico printers, millers, and 29 other craftworkers provides valuable insights on Victorian working class culture. More than 700 illustrations.

"In Surveying in Early America: The Point of Beginning, An Illustrated History award-winning photographer Dan Patterson and American historian Clinton Terry vividly and accurately document and retrace the steps surveyors took to map the Ohio River Valley. Patterson and Terry thoroughly create detailed and historically accurate narratives paired with exquisite and vivid photographs of these little known expeditions of our founding father. Working with Colonial re-enactors at sites in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, from Fort Normal to Colonial Williamsburg, Patterson recreates the effort of Washington and his team of surveyors to map the American wilderness and occasionally lay personal claim land to great expanses of land along the way. Through the lens of Patterson camera, readers will see what Washington saw as he worked to learn his trade and then lead expeditions into the American interior using instruments and methods employed 260 years ago"--